EtherCAT is a real-time industrial Ethernet technology particularly suitable for communication between control systems and peripheral devices like I/O systems, drives, sensors and actuators. It is part of the IEC1158 and the IEC61800 standard.
An EtherCAT system comprises a master and some slaves. Conventionally, the master plays the role of both a communication master and a control master. This makes the master code very complex and special technology must be introduced for achieving the expected fast communication speed.